October 2, 2025

September 30th marks the one year anniversary of when this great adventure for me actually started - when the ship sailed out of Belfast Boatyard.

There were a lot of festivities on Board the ship, on this Sea Day. They started at 10 am with a trivia contest with our COO Mike & CEO Kathy, on Ship and Resident Facts, over the last year. They were playing against each other and Kathy's memory was by far better and luckier in her guesses, than Mike. Then their was a mural painting and numerous cocktail parties of various groups, all coming together at Dinner time, for one giant seating of 350 Residents in the Thistle Restaurant  for a special gala dinner, complete with cake. This was then followed by a fantastic pool party, on the upper deck, with the music again by DJ Shanti. The Residents and CREW all got to party, dance and drink together in a fantastic harmony until Midnight and the party even continued much later for some into the wee hours of morning! It was a FUN day with a great group of people, I so wish you could all experience!

HONIARA, SOLOMON ISLANDS

By Patricia Patrick • November 16, 2025
Another great day exploring the South Pacific ! Today as soon as our ship docked in Honiara , and we were cleared by customs, I was off with 9 other residents, to get in 2 small speed boats and head out to Simon's Nature Reserve in the Solomon Islands . It was about an hour long ride across the Iron Bottom Sound but so worth it to experience this special place!

ALOTAU, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

By Patricia Patrick • November 14, 2025
Fun fact - Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the World! It is estimated that there are at least 826 Papuan languages. Some are spoken by just a handful of people, while others by 100,000. (Thanks - Basia & Wikipedia for sharing this information).

TULLY RIVER, WHITE WATER RAFTING, AUSTRALIA

By Patricia Patrick • November 12, 2025
Tully is a small sugar mill town about 2 hours south of Cairns and we traveled here with a group of about 20 other residents to go white water rafting in the Tully River at the Gorge in the National Park. It is the beginning of the wet season and the river was running at a high level, so the rapids were class 4 out of 5. We had some trepidation, but were excited for the adventure! OMG so much FUN!!